“I used rather to look down upon Europe as a place where people knew nothing at all,” said he. “We’re sort of trained to think it’s an extinct volcano, but it isn’t. It’s alive. My God! It’s alive. It’s Hell in the shape of a Limburger cheese. I wish the whole population of Atlanta, Georgia, would come over and just see. There’s a lot to be learned. I thought I knew how to take care of myself, but this tortoise-shell-eyed Count taught me last night that I couldn’t. He cleaned me out of twenty-five hundred dollars——”
“How?” asked Aristide, sharply.
“Ecarté.”
Aristide brought his hand down with a bang on the table and uttered anathemas in French and Provençal entirely unintelligible to Eugene Miller; but the youth knew by instinct that they were useful, soul-destroying curses and he felt comforted.
“Ecarté! You played ecarté with Lussigny? But my dear young friend, do you know anything of ecarté?”
“Of course,” said Miller. “I used to play it as a child with my sisters.”
“Do you know the jeux de règle?”
“The what?”
“The formal laws of the game—the rules of discards——”
“Never heard of them,” said Eugene Miller.